racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

I reported on the Blog Herald how Blogging Pro has released its latest InSense theme under a sponsored scheme. This means a sponsor paid for a link at the footer of the theme. The benefits? Users get a great DesignDisease-designed theme, the designer gets paid good money, and the sponsor gets inbound links.

I know several designers who give away WordPress themes to blog hosting services for free, so long as they get a link back to their sites. Now this seems to be a great business model for people who want to monetize their theme creations. Not all bloggers can afford to pay for your themes. But there are companies and businesses that would be willing to foot the bill. In the end, everyone’s happy: users get great themes, designers get good money, companies get inbound links.

There are some who aren’t too happy with such an arrangement, and view sponsorship as a sneaky way to get backlinks. However, Blogging Pro is quite candid with the fact that their theme is sponsored, and the theme license even allows for the removal of the sponsor link if a user chooses so.

Fellow Blog Herald writer Lorelle VanFossen has this to say about sponsored themes:

Actually, this was brought up over a month ago and was seriously slammed. People were digging into their WordPress Themes to remove these. There was a huge backlash against Theme designers and sites which sponsor such links.

A link back is considered appropriate. A link to a “sponsor”, aka advertising, is very much frowned upon by serious bloggers and WordPress fans. The average blogger won’t care or even notice, as you say, but the ones who do have spoken loudly that they find this bad manners, poor taste, and, for some, criminal.

Personally, I would think there is no harm in having themes sponsored, as long as this is stated explicitly outright, and not done in a sneaky manner. Even better if the user can opt to remove the link.

What do you think?

I have (finally) updated to the latest version of WordPress, 2.1.2. Now I’m thinking of overhauling the site’s look. I’ve been favoring the Blogging Pro theme, which was recently released to the public by my former colleagues at the Bloggy Network (actually we’re still working pretty closely together on some projects). Check out Study Driving. After a couple of theme changes (including Cutline and Torn), I’ve settled with the pleasing three-column layout that is the BP theme.

Now, I’ve always strived to keep the J Spot as simple and straightforward as possible, and with the best possible usability in mind (I try). However, sometimes I think the narrow theme (optimized for 800px) gets too constricting.

What would you say to a blog overhaul?

I won’t exactly throw away everything and build up from scratch. I mean that’s bad for SEO. I’ll likely still be applying the same elements (text, navigation links, etc.) but over a new layout. I’ll be experimenting with a new look sometime within the day (while my FTP client does some WP uploading/upgrading across a bunch of other sites).

Jhay Rocas has already done it. His blog used to sport the same Hemmed theme. Now he’s using the Blogging Pro theme. (And incidentally, his blog is now more popular than mine, according to use.com.ph ).

Then again, I’d still prefer a mid to large font theme like the one fellow blogheralderLorelle on WP uses. I probably need to tweak Elena’s (of Design Disease) BP design a bit.

I’d love to hear from you.